Birdsong

As is typical of literary realism, the story is set in an ordinary world, among the rhythms of everyday life. The narrative has a confessional tone as the narrator relays the concerns of both her life and the lives of others. Although framing, flashbacks, and exposition are the story’s most prominent literary devices, Adichie uses dialogue to establish the characters in the story. This dialogue is highly individuated from one character to another and helps to create verisimilitude, which is a key ingredient in literary realism. Verisimilitude is a fictional text’s ability to create the illusion of reality—often through close observation of the seemingly mundane or trivial details that make up the texture of life in the real world. Many aspects of this story serve to generate verisimilitude, from the carefully rendered speech patterns of the characters to the detailed descriptions of traffic on the streets of Lagos. Given the reality of gender norms in modern society, the text’s major themes of Gender as Pageantry and Sexism in Everyday Life also reinforce this verisimilitude.

By centering a narrator whose romantic choices violate social norms and expose her to judgment from others, “Birdsong” raises questions about how gender and class inequality dictate and limit women’s lives. The narrator does not share Chikwado’s moral indignation at the very idea of being a married man’s lover. In fact, the central conflict in the narrative is not the narrator’s choice to pursue a relationship with a married man, but the gendered hierarchies that follows said choice. Within the relationship, she is implicitly subordinated to her wealthy male lover—waiting for him to call, living in his second home. In the wider world, other hierarchies apply, as the narrator begins to realize that she does not share the social advantages that come with being this man’s wife.

These hierarchies are symbolized through the motif of bird courtship, which parallels human relationship rituals. In paragraph 13, the narrator states that her lover tells her that “most birds do not have penises.” The narrator disputes this claim by stating that she once saw chickens mating (Paragraph 14), but the lover dismisses her experiential knowledge: “Of course they mate, but not with penises” (Paragraph 15). The discussion of bird sex is a form of flirtation between them, and it gives rise to a pet name for the lover, “CwithaD,” for “cock with a dick” (Paragraph 15). At the same time, it reinforces the power imbalance between them. He is the authority, gently chiding her for her ignorance. He dispenses knowledge with the same self-satisfied magnanimity with which he dispenses favors to his acquaintances.

The courtship of birds comes to symbolize the courtship rituals of humans—the ways in which humans view their relationships as feats to be accomplished rather than experiences to be enjoyed. The mating dance of kingfishers (Paragraph 13) is highly ritualized, with each bird playing its assigned role almost mechanically, out of some inexplicable compulsion. In this sense, it serves as a mirror of the way the narrator will come to view her relationship with the lover. In these bird-watching scenes and their accompanying dialogue, the text juxtaposes the animal world with the human in order to emphasize the theme of Gender as Pageantry—within the context of their illicit-yet-highly-conventional relationship, both the narrator and her lover perform their assigned roles as if by irresistible instinct. The experience, however, is radically different for each of them—evidence of Sexism in Everyday Life. The lover relishes his role, playing it as if it were “a game,” as the narrator frequently says. The narrator, meanwhile, finds herself unable to stop playing her role even as she realizes that the relationship is bad for her.

Adichie stresses the inherent imbalance in the ways in which gendered rituals impact their participants. Chikwado, for example, is “thirty-two and tottering under the weight of her desire: to settle down” (Paragraph 4). She spends her free time attending different churches with the common goal of finding herself a husband (Paragraph 4). Like an obsession, Chikwado attends church services for the hope of one day marrying. The will to hope is a sub-theme of the text, but it is the way in which this hope manifests in remarkably socially-gendered ways that keep women like Chikwado dedicated in their marriage search. Marriage searches are “all [Chikwado and her] female coworkers talked about” (Paragraph 4). The wider society reinforces this expectation. Unmarried women are treated with a disregard that verges on contempt. When a driver rear-ends the narrator at a red light and then berates her as if it were her fault, Chikwado says, “If you were wearing a wedding ring, he would not have shouted at you like that” (Paragraph 53). In contrast to Chikwado and the other women at the narrator’s work, the men have other aspirations. The narrator’s lover, for instance, talks about the things he has done for other people such as getting them a job, giving them money—actions which in their eyes “immortalize[s] [him] as a great man” (Paragraph 12)

These stark gender performances serve as evidence of the text’s other major theme, Sexism in Everyday Life. Since women are forced to rely on marriage for validation, their power is usurped by patriarchal forces. Marriage alone offers women protection from negative gender-based interactions. Marriage is the tool whereby women validate their status in society. The taxi driver’s actions are no different from those of the waiter who pointedly fails to greet the narrator in the story’s final scene, or the boss who demands that the narrator and Chikwado serve a birthday cake at work (Paragraph 86): a symptom of a patriarchal society in which women are always expected to perform subservience to men.

Similarly, the lover’s treatment of the narrator is further evidence of ingrained patriarchal behavior, even though the sexism the narrator faces with him manifests differently. As his mistress, the narrator does not have the same external validation as his wife. Emmanuel, her lover’s driver, ignores her when her lover is not with her. Seeing his actions as disrespectful, the narrator confronts her lover about it; however, her lover dismisses her concerns by explaining that Emmanuel “didn’t understand [her]” (Paragraph 34). The narrator then returns to her interior observations of her past life, stating that “Emmanuel had shown me the power of my lover’s wife; he would not have been so rude if he feared he might be reprimanded” (Paragraph 35). This power the narrator describes is one that falls into the symbolic protection marriage offers; however, unlike her experience with the taxi driver, Emmanuel’s treatment of her along with her lover’s lack of action on her behalf confirms marriage’s power to validate women’s experiences. Without this tool, the narrator is ultimately disposable even if she is the lover of a wealthy man.

These feelings of disposability lead to the end of her relationship with her lover. After her lover fails to notice how service people like the waiter and driver ignore her, the narrator realizes her lover only wants a partner he can show off as a marker of his wealth and status. This helps her realize that her relationship is built on performance rather than mutual connection.

Ultimately, the narrator’s relationship with her lover plays into the theme of Social Roles as Obstacles to Connection since, as his mistress, the narrator could never achieve the same relationship dynamic he has with his wife. For her lover, his “path was already closed, had indeed never been open” (Paragraph 5)—an insight that, in retrospect, the narrator realizes she should have had from the beginning.

Like the courtship of birds, their relationship is defined by rigid expectations, making true connection impossible. These gender expectations, and their attendant power imbalances, shape their relationship from its beginning and make its end inevitable.